Grand-Pré

Acadians settled here from the 1680s and, rather than clearing forest, drained the salt marsh using dykes fitted with aboiteaux, hinged sluice gates that let fresh water out at low tide and kept the sea from coming back in; the result was some of the most fertile farmland in Nova Scotia and it is still farmed by the same dyke system. On 5 September 1755 the men and boys of the district were summoned to the church here and told they were to be deported; the community was scattered and the buildings burned. UNESCO listed the landscape in 2012. A memorial church and a statue of Longfellow's Evangeline stand on the site.

What you actually see

• The dykelands - polder farmland still worked behind Acadian dykes.
• The aboiteau system - the sluice technology that made the reclamation work.
• The memorial church - built in the twentieth century on the deportation site.
• The Evangeline statue - the figure from Longfellow's poem about the expulsion.

When to go

May to October for the interpretive centre; the landscape and church grounds are accessible year-round. The 1755 commemoration falls in late July. Autumn light on the dykelands is good.

Honest expectations

Nothing Acadian survives above ground, since the buildings were burned; the site is landscape and memorial. The church is a twentieth-century commemorative building. The centre closes in winter.

Nearby

Wolfville lies west; Cape Split is north.